Brands that regard their websites as a primary revenue source have three distinct priorities: give customers an optimal experience, create loyalty and convert potentially passive browsers into active buyers.
It’s not a coincidence that experience and loyalty precede sales in this short priority list; the relationship between exceptional customer experiences and revenue growth is fairly direct. The better your website speaks to your visitors, the more loyal they will become and the more sales you will generate.
The good news is that customers can (and should) be very active in the optimization process. Through their clicks, page views, bounces, reviews and purchases, our online customers are offering us helpful feedback about their online experiences, in real time.
So what can you do with all this data?
1. Testing
Using A/B and multivariate testing to discover your problem areas is a great first step. In fact, if you’re running an ecommerce site without testing in place, you’re probably losing valuable conversions and dollars as you read this.
No matter where you begin, whether it’s with shopping cart funnels, homepage bounce rates, search or call-to-actions, testing different variations of elements encountered along the path to purchase — and deciding which ones produce the highest conversions — will begin... Read more
Tagged 'customer loyalty' 
Two Must-Haves for True Website Optimization
Building Communities of Passionate Users: What I’ve Learned
In the words of American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez: “We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”
Inspirational words in their own right, and applicable to Chavez’s cause, but I think there are also important takeaways when it comes to building and reinforcing a sense of community in business. It starts, and ends, with the customer. Organizations must ensure that customers’ aspirations and goals are at the center of their technology development and innovation ambitions. With a shared understanding of those goals, organizations can build the framework for a passionate, loyal community.
Within the B2C world, there are numerous brands that embody a sense of fervent community – Harley-Davidson and MINI are obvious examples. For B2B organizations – particularly those whose customers make long-term investments in technology and processes – building and sustaining a sense of community and instilling loyalty can be no less important.
In my experience at Neolane, it’s especially important for B2B organizations to reinforce that their long-term prosperity is directly... Read more
Building Customer Loyalty With Email Segmentation
Loyalty-targeted emails can result in open rates as much as 40 percent higher than bulk mailings. That’s a statistic worth noting. If you don’t currently use segmentation to cater to subscriber preferences and build loyalty among existing customers, now is the time to start.
Thank You Notes
A simple “thank you” for subscribing, purchasing, or providing feedback goes a long way toward building rapport with your audience. Let subscribers know you appreciate their business and offer them a special discount or coupon code to be used toward a future purchase.
Shopping Cart Recovery
Use shopping cart recovery software to remind customers of unfinished purchases. A timely email letting them know the cart is about to expire or that the items are now on sale may be enough to bring them back to your website.
Redemption Reminders
If you use a loyalty program that incorporates points, coupon codes, or e-dollars, send subscribers an email when these incentives are about to expire. They’ll appreciate the reminder and the tactic could boost your sales.
Feedback
Solicit customer feedback in the form of interest and opinion surveys, product reviews, and social sharing buttons. Customers appreciate knowing that you care what they think.
Shopping Preferences
Use previous subscriber behavior to target emails toward their individual... Read more
Nothing but Net: Creating Loyal Mobile Customers
He dribbles left, uses his patented crossover dribble, and, like a marksman, fires a 20 foot jumper that hits “nothing but net” just as the buzzer goes off. Game over. The good guys (2008 Seattle Sonics) win the NBA Championship.
This is the year of another strike-delayed NBA season (and three years removed from my beloved Sonics leaving town). It’s also a time when mobile operators have finally embraced their existing customers as the key to financial success.
Creating “net promoters” (or real loyalists) is the new buzz among mobile marketers, but in reality the chance of operators creating net promoters over night is about as likely as the NBA season starting on time (I, for one, look forward to seeing Kobe play in Italy!).
Really smart mobile marketers know that creating net promoters among their customers is a tougher task than acquiring them. They also know that if they scored their customers today, they’d probably have many more detractors than promoters.
So what do they have to do?
- Think longer term
- Measure differently
- Be customer centric
- Practice, practice, practice
The beauty of net promoter score (NPS) is its simplicity in measuring loyalty. You ask customers if they’d recommend you... Read more
